“Edou” is the first single release off of Althea SullyCole’s debut album Due West, out July 11th, 2025, on Chaco World Music.

“Edou,” is composed for the kora, a 21-stringed harp from the Mandé region of West Africa (including present-day Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia). The track pays homage to Althea’s first kora teacher, Edou Manga, with whom she began studying the instrument in 2011. Edou is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist of Jola descent based in Dakar, Senegal.

The hook for the single came to Althea upon returning home from a lesson with Edou in 2014. She had assumed that it came from something Edou had taught her that day, but, when she went to study with him the following week, Edou had never heard the melody before. The composition developed in the following months demonstrates its eponym’s influence through a lively mix of traditional and pop approaches to kora performance that is characteristic of Edou Manga’s playing.

“Edou” is a fitting introduction to Althea’s debut album, Due West, which can be described as a work of jazz fusion. The album explores the kora’s range in dialogue with a variety of different instruments, traditions, and genres. These diverse elements trace passages between and through West Africa, the Atlantic Ocean, and North America. The space and time traveled on the album are constitutive of Althea’s identity as a kora player of African and European descent.

“Edou” was produced by Lanier Sammons, who also performs guitar on the track, in addition to Althea SullyCole on kora, Rossyl Esdras Boussamba Linguissi on bass and Jeffrey A. Jones on percussion. Animator Timothy David Orme produced an original visualizer, which draws from visual tropes found on wax fabrics from sub-Saharan Africa.